


polaroid

by petalloso



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Established Relationship, M/M, Time Skips, richie and mike have my heart, richie on a cross country road trip/epic journey in search of lost love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24480139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalloso/pseuds/petalloso
Summary: His shoulder smacks painfully into someone going the opposite direction. The guy steadies him when he nearly eats the floor, and he mumbles something akin to an apology, looks up into bambi eyes, furrowed brows, pink lips.Found you,he thinks. And then the thought vanishes, and he is left achingly empty, and confused.The guy, equally flabbergasted, or maybe just also really drunk, studies him closely. His lips purse, head tilting comically, and where his hand still rests on Richie’s shoulder he burns. Richie blinks, resists the absurd urge to wrap his arms around this stranger.“Have we met?”“I think I would’ve remembered.”(Richie leaves Derry to follow after Eddie when he moves away, but on his way he forgets what he left for)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 24
Kudos: 105





	polaroid

**Author's Note:**

> tried something weird with the style here, messy, timey, all that, which was fun, but also,,, Weird 
> 
> stay safe ya'll, and pls do all that you can right now and in the future, too <3 
> 
> thx for reading! <3 
> 
> ///trigger warnings///: vaguely nsfw in moments, period typical homophobia, amnesia, substance abuse (drinking and smoking), a heated argument between richie and eddie, mention of sonia dying, drinking, throwing up
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](https://petalloso.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/freidegg) if you have any q's or if i missed anything, pls let me know!

**JULY 1993**

“Take me with you,” Richie says. Because he can’t think of a joke for this and doesn’t feel like cracking one anyway. And he doesn’t mean it but he wants it so badly he aches everywhere—deeply, the sort no sleep or soft hands could help relieve. 

He is taller now, struck a growth spurt two years ago and shot up like a bean sprout in a mason jar, but he could fold his limbs up to fit in a suitcase, sneak into the trunk of the car, stay silent all the way until they got there. He could sneak into their new house, eat whatever leftovers Eddie brought him, sleep on the floor of his bedroom. 

He would, happily, and Eddie’s mother never had to know. 

“Richie,” Eddie says softly, nothing else. The look of his eyes gives away the rest, what hurts too much to say aloud so he doesn’t. Richie sees his heartbreak, and in his own volatility might make it worse, so he doesn’t ask again. 

They hold each other for a long time, afterwards. Eddie rests his cheek on the crown of his head, practically in his lap and not making to leave any time soon, and Richie rests his head on his chest, so that every time Eddie inhales to exhale Richie thinks, unknowingly, that it must feel sort of like being lifted by a wave. Except he’s never been to the ocean. 

And then Richie drives him home in his shitty car that Eddie calls a death machine, the moon a perfect crescent that follows them all the way there. And they sit with the engine off and the windows rolled down, warm summer night air and cicadas buzzing. Richie feels the same specific way he always does when the rest of the world has already fallen asleep, and breathing sounds almost too loud. 

“I’ll write you,” Eddie says. Inside his house a light flickers on. “I love you, Richie.” 

Because Richie never figured out how to say it back, and because Eddie knows this, he unlocks the car door without waiting for a response. Richie watches him all the way up to the porch and into the house, where the light inside turns off. 

He drives home, windows down and eyes burning, and falls asleep on top of the blanket. 

–

Eddie doesn’t write. Richie sends a letter but receives it back, _Return to Sender_ sprawled on the envelope in big block handwriting. He looks his name up in the yellow pages but Sonia only ever picks up when he calls, and Richie hangs up before she can recognize his voice and tell him off. Eventually he stops trying. 

It happened the same with Bev first, and then Bill and the rest, so he shouldn’t be so surprised. But he is, and nurses his hurt with cigarettes and stale weed and wine he steals from his mother, stored in an old thermos at the back of the refrigerator, and sleeps 16 hours a day for a couple months, too. 

The air in Derry suffocates. He spends his days smoking, trying to quit smoking, feeling like shit, smoking some more. Mike teaches him how to milk the goats and even once how to birth one. He studies, passes his classes, burns cds with songs that hurt to listen to, listens to them and hurts. 

Mike tries to convince him to apply for college but he doesn’t see the point. So he doesn’t, and when Mike receives his acceptance letter in the mail he only regrets it for a moment before congratulating him. Mike says he’s going to commute, which kind of pisses Richie off when he hears it. _You’re so much better than this place._ But he’s stubborn, a staple characteristic of the Losers perhaps, and confirms his enrollment a week later. 

They graduate, take pictures in the black gown and cap, and spend the night laying on top of blankets in the bed of Mike’s truck. Richie tastes bitter in his mouth, and his lips are so dry they stick whenever he parts his mouth to speak. He slips his glasses up to his forehead so the stars above him blur messily. 

“I wish they were here,” Mike says. Maybe Richie missed a shooting star or maybe he’s just saying it. He hums, sips at his beer without lifting his head and spills it all over his chest instead. He wipes it off but it leaves his fingers sticky. 

“I wanna get out of this place,” Richie says. 

“Me, too.” 

“We could, you know. We could go find them, ask them why they never even called.” 

“I’m not so sure we would like the answer,” Mike says. “Besides, you know I can’t.” 

“Right. Sorry.” 

He’s tried this before and it always ended the same. Mike had something to stay for. He chose to be responsible for the farm, for his family. But Richie had nothing. And he chose that, too, never allowed himself to care about anything enough to stay for. Except for maybe one thing, one person, and that person was gone. So he doesn’t belong here anymore. He probably never really did. 

He could so easily shift and press his shoulder to Mike’s shoulder, bridge the gap he feels growing between them. So he does, and Mike presses back but still Richie yearns for something like what he has, something to care about, or to believe in. He wishes, bitterly and then guiltily for feeling bitter, that his parents gave him direction, that they loved him a little less, just enough to smack the shit out of him for wasting away like this. 

Terribly, he envies Mike, because he loves the farm and his family enough to stay here for it. And he knows also that Mike envies him, because he wanted to leave but wouldn’t, and because Richie could. 

–

He makes a withdrawal at the bank, thanking his past self for having at least enough foresight to start working as a grocery bagger when he turned fourteen, and be semi-consistent about it. His parents are okay with him leaving, even want to send him away with a bit of cash, and he isn’t really shocked at their lack of reluctance. He has his car checked out—still shitty but mostly functional. 

He makes a call. Sonia picks up. He clears his throat. 

“May I speak to Edward Kaspbrak?” 

_“Who is this?”_

“Sorry, ma’am. This is Doctor uh Wiseman.” Mike makes a face and Richie sticks his tongue out at him. “I’m calling with some news about Edward’s latest checkup.” 

_“What? Is there something wrong with my Eddie?”_

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose information about his healthcare, since he is no longer a minor.” 

_Nice,_ Mike mouths with two enthusiastic thumbs up. Richie grimaces. 

_“But he would want me to know.”_

“I’m sure he would, ma’am. If you could just get me his contact information so I can confirm that with him, and I will call you right back.” 

_“But he doesn’t live here anymore! Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”_

So Eddie finally got out from under her. Good for him, Richie thinks. But that puts a wrench in his own plans for a surprise visit. Eddie had been accepted to a university in Los Angeles with a full scholarship, Sonia tells him, her voice a strange mixture of boastfulness and betrayal, before she starts to beg for answers again. _I’m sure I can’t, ma’am. But as soon as I confirm with him you’ll be the first I speak to._

So she gives him a number to reach him, and he writes it down with shaky fingers and then he hangs up. Mike compliments the believability of his voice. Which is nice, because he’d been working on it. 

It almost feels too easy. His hands shake as he calls the number written messily on a paper slip. 

“Hey,” Richie says, heart in his throat at the sound of his voice, tinny over the connection. “It’s Richie.” 

_“Richie?”_

“Yeah.” He should go for a joke but can’t think of one. 

_“Uh sorry, I don’t know a Richie. I think you might have the wrong number.”_

“Oh,” Richie says, swallows around the lump in his throat. “Probably, yeah. Sorry about that.” 

_“It’s okay. Um, bye then.”_

Mike talks him down. He’s been doing a bit of research at the library, he says. His hand is warm on Richie’s shoulder, and he breathes with him, in then out until his head stops spinning. They forget, he says, when they leave Derry, which made the only logical sense really, and it was why they made those promises to call, to write, to visit if they could, and then never did. 

Mike gifts him a hand bound notebook the size of his hand. Richie isn’t totally sure what to do with it. But Ben once went on a drunken rant the fall of freshman year about how obsessed mankind was with preserving history, which might explain why Richie is compelled to use it regardless. He sits in the back of his car, doors propped open and radio low, or in the bed of Mike’s trunk, or in the clubhouse while Mike is gallivanting on the farm, and he writes. 

His mind is a mile a minute, but writing is slower than talking, so it quickly becomes frustrating, and frantic, and a little bit incoherent. He also writes like a crazed man, feels like he is preparing for an epic journey ahead, the greek hero of a tragedy, or maybe a comedy. 

> _Beverly… great hair, keeps a key around her neck, taught me how to punch (keep your thumb on the outside or youll break it), got me smoking in the 8th grade so thats her fault mom. Ben likes the new kids and is genius, once lost his library card and had mini ben breakdown about it, also clubhouse re:genius. Stan knows birds and channels old grandma from a past life, if he gives you the look do not give in i repeat do not surrender. Bill is a nerd, obsessed with his bike, like an okay writer_ _see if you can dig up that one story he gave you for your birthday_ _Mike has truck fetish, taught me how to milk goats which is harder than it looks, nice arms hard not to look at dont tell him this he will get smug about it_

He tries to sketch their faces, too. Bev and Stan with their beautiful curls, Ben and his cute as heck cheeks, Bill with that dumb haircut he got a year before moving away that made him look like a mushroom, Mike and his cheeky smile. But they look terrible, honestly nightmarish. He keeps them in there anyway. 

> _Eddie. Eddie Eddie eds spaghetti eddie. Can tell when its about to rain because his arm starts to hurt. Calls me names. Kicks me in the face. His feet smell gross but dont try and tell him that because he wont believe you. Steals my glasses to clean_ ~~_and his shirt will ride up when he uses the hem so you can see the strip of skin on his stomach._~~ _Runs fast. Loves trains for some reason. Too smart, talks so fast even I have trouble keeping up sometimes and when he gets real worked up hell spittle a little, tans in the summer, freckles on his shoulders and cheeks. Cheeks!! Once tried to drown me._ ~~_I fucked his mom._ ~~_~~I~~ m gonna hunt this beautiful little gremlin down and make him remember me or _

The ink bleeds, paper thin. His hand aches by the end of it. He digs through his old boxes for that story Bill wrote for him and finds it with a pile of old polaroids, a few that were taken before Bev left Derry, in the barrens that one summer, reeling still, and taking comfort in one another. 

Amongst the collection, there is one close-up shot of Eddie that catches his eye, laying in a hammock they'd put up outside and blocking half the photograph with his cast. Richie remembers trying to snap that picture, arguing with Eddie about ruining it with his goddamn arm, polaroid film was expensive and _geez you look cute, Eds,_ and Eddie hovering over his shoulder afterwards, hammock threatening to flip and dump them overboard, to watch it develop. 

He slips it in between the pages of his notebook. 

Mike brings him a paper map, too, and they trace the route in red ink, I-80 through to New York, the midwest until he reached Utah, down to Nevada, and finally California. It would probably take him a week, depending on how many hours he managed per day. Or less, if he sped, which he was willing to risk even in his death machine. 

  
  


**SEPTEMBER 1994**

His stuff is packed up and in the trunk. It’s not much really, a suitcase, a few boxes, a backpack with the essentials, for when he sleeps in motels for the night. Looking at it, Richie is a little bit astonished at how much of his life fits into so little, and also at how much he is willing to leave behind. 

His eyes feel sour and sticky from waking so early. The morning air is cold, sky lavender turning blue before sunrise. His mother wipes her eyes when she steps away from him. His father pats him on the back like he typically does. He embraces Mike. 

It hurts more, oddly but not really surprising at all, to say goodbye to Mike. Richie aches in his chest, burns in his eyes. He laughs into Mike’s shoulder at the absurdity of this, but when he pulls away he can’t remember what he found so funny. 

“I’m gonna find them,” Richie says. “I promise. I’ll bring them back.” 

Mike only smiles, nods. Their hands hang clasped between them. “Alright, Richie.” 

–

He gets a flat tire in the middle of the freeway in Iowa. He has enough time to at least pull to the side, flip off the guy behind him for honking, and pout in his seat until he works up the nerve to get out and change it. 

It’s not so bad, really. He has a spare tire and all the tools for changing it, because he anticipated this. But it takes him longer than it should—a couple hours—and he works up a sheen of gross sweat and the entire affair cuts his travel time for the day short, which he’s hugely pissed about. And he can’t remember where he learned to change a tire or why it’s even important that he does… some guy with grease on his elbows forehead and chin, bonking Richie with a karate chop on the crown of his head for his incompetence before walking him, carefully, almost lovingly, through each step. 

When he’s finally finished he sits in the driver’s seat and nurses his headache with water, massaging his temples. He blinks at the open plains ahead of him, the sun beginning to set and making everything golden beneath it. He knows he should keep driving, but he can’t remember _why._ He pulls out the map, tracing the line of the route, reaching the end, Los Angeles, and his mouth shapes carefully the name written there beside the city. 

_Eddie._ Of course. Richie reaches for the glove compartment, pulls it open and grabs the notebook from inside. He flips through it, but his head hurts too much to read, so he pulls out the old polaroid of Eddie in the hammock, and lines it up with his name written on the map. His head might split in two like a burst watermelon, looking at it. He chugs the rest of his water, slips the polaroid back in between the pages and returns the notebook to the glove compartment, and then turns off the running engine. 

And then Richie climbs into the back seat, and he sleeps, car parked by the side of the freeway. He forgets what he dreams about when he wakes up, but his headache is gone. He folds up the map, and drives on.

–

Richie makes it through the state of Iowa and then Nebraska, and crosses the Colorado border in a little over three days. He stops to refill on gas, buys an iced coffee and Bugles from inside while he waits for his tank to fill. He scans over his map, marking down the distance crossed with a pen, and then spilled iced coffee all over it. 

“Shit,” he hisses. “Shitshitshit.” He presses the paper map to his sweater in the hopes of soaking it up, pops open the door and waves it around to dry. His fingers shake as he spreads it across the hood of his car, station lights fluorescent and painful for his eyes. 

It’s ruined. Not everything but the part that matters at least. Richie had circled his final destination in red, labeled it with something important and now can’t remember what. But the ink is bleeding now, and when he wipes it with his sleeve hem it smears worse. He is choking on a knot in his throat. He feels like he might puke. 

“Fuck!” He shouts. No one is around to hear him say it and if anyone were he wouldn’t give a shit. His eyelids prickle, threatening tears. He wants to fling himself onto the pavement and throw a fit like he used to when he was a kid, curl up in the backseat and sleep right here at this gas station and dream up what he can’t remember but needs to. 

He shuts his eyes, hunches over the hood, and calms the fuck down. And then he tosses the map back into his car and digs around for a coin in his pocket, before making his way to the payphone around the corner with the bathrooms. 

The phone clicks after the fourth ring. He breathes a shaky breath. 

“Hey, ma. It’s your nightmare child.” 

_“Oh hi, sweetheart.”_

“How are you?” 

_“Oh, you know.”_ He can picture her, waving her hand around. _“We miss you.”_

“Miss you, too.” 

_“Where are you now?”_

“Just crossed into Utah this morning. It’s nice here. I’m thinking about becoming a Mormon.” 

_“Well, that’s nice, though if you're kidding maybe a bit insensitive. I thought you were a heathen.”_

“People change.” 

She hums. _“Let me know how that works out.”_

“Hey, mom?” 

_“Yes, Richie?”_

“What was I like as a kid?” 

_“Well–”_ She starts, and he can almost picture her, eyes to the ceiling, pursed lips in thought. _“Soon as you could speak you never really stopped. I liked listening to you, but sometimes I worried you’d never stop to catch your breath. You had terrible nightmares. I worried about that, too. You were so smart. Your teachers would tell me, but always got into such trouble._

_“But those friends of yours helped, I think. Bill and that pretty girl with the red hair. Beverly, I think her name was. And Eddie. You guys stuck together like glue, I swear. Eddie this and Eddie that, every day you came home. His mom was a real piece of work, though, if I remember right. Anyway, why do you ask?”_

“I don’t know,” Richie says honestly, except he remembers now, that he is driving towards Eddie. “I guess I was just having trouble remembering.” 

–

He drives through Utah the next day, and sleeps the night in a cheap motel. In the morning his car won’t start, so he asks the front desk for a mechanic and when he takes it to the shop they tell him it will be a couple days at the least. So he forks over some cash, with an inkling that he is being overcharged but no proof for it, takes the bus back to the motel, and cries on the floor of his shitty room for no reason he can articulate. 

They fix his car in two days, which is faster than Richie had hoped for but still too long. He is compelled, despite his earlier breakdown, or maybe in lieu of, to continue driving. So he does, and he keeps change in his pocket like gold, calls his mom whenever he stops to fill gas, feels a little better and a little worse each time he hangs up the phone. 

He tells her about the sights, but he doesn’t actually see them. He is moving too fast forward to stop and enjoy, frantic in his need to get where he is going. His map, stained brown, sits on the passenger seat. He drives through a thunderstorm, and his windshield wipers suck so he has to stop when it gets too heavy to see in front of him anymore. 

He goes through his cds, then goes through them again. When the music isn’t enough to distract him, his head begins to hurt again. His legs ache, too. So he stops to stretch them out, buy snacks, pump more gas. He passes long stretches of road, eating with one hand and driving with the other, sings to himself, screaming the lyrics when he feels the need, alone in a car for so long he goes a little stir crazy. 

He is hungry when he finally reaches the city that night, windows down and the smell of smog around him, the skyline like nothing he has ever seen before, the small town boy that he is. Palm trees line the freeway, and the roads are a rundown dusty color. He takes the first exit with a sign indicating a grocery store, and drives through an old neighborhood with construction. He parks a little crooked on the street. 

He dawdles a little buying groceries, giving himself time to think of what to do next, remember what he came here for. He buys painkillers, for his head, some fruit because he is trying to be sensible, a couple energy drinks and a new toothbrush. He asks the clerk lady where the closest motel might be, asks for a pack of cigarettes, and hikes his two paper bags up to his sides. 

There is a fresh dent on his bumper. He wants to scream, but instead plops onto the curbside, his paper bags of food between his legs, and ponders the situation at hand—he feels very distinctly unlucky, entirely unprepared, young and stupid for leaving home without a plan, also like something is perched precariously on his tongue and he is not careful he will swallow it and choke, and finally like he needs to update his prescription. 

He takes off his glasses, wipes them with the hem of his sleeve, the sound of laughter and the shuffling of feet behind him. “Hang on, guys.” 

Richie sneaks a glance, feeling suddenly observed, and there is some guy hovering over him. He squints, blurred vision, and slips his glasses back on—the guy, a boy really, comes into focus, huge eyes, impossibly so, and brown hair chopped short but puffed up from the humidity, dressed in a cute little polo and blue shorts too short even for the muggy heat. Richie stares, slack-jawed, swallows that thing perched on his tongue, does not choke but nearly, and blinks stickily up at him. 

“Are you okay?” 

Richie closes his mouth, opens his mouth, is a fish. “Do you remember when we used to sing?” His voice lilts, not quite a tune, but the impression of one. 

“What?” 

“She la la la la la la–” 

_“What?”_

“Brown-eyed girl,” Richie finishes, voice off-key but recognizable at least. 

“I know it,” the guy says, sort of scowling but like he is working for it, mouth twitching, a hint of amusement that Richie snags onto, hooked like the fish he is. “Has that ever worked for you?” 

“Dunno,” Richie admits with a shrug that feels heavy on his shoulders. “I haven’t tried it on anyone except…” 

“Except?” 

“Uh, you.” 

“Uh hu,” the guy says, unimpressed. He softens quickly, though. “Seriously though, are you okay?” 

Richie shrugs again. “Someone hit my car.” 

“That one?” He gestures and when Richie nods affirmation, says, “it’s a shitty car.” 

“Asshole,” Richie says, good-natured but feigning offense. He knows it’s a shitty car. 

“I stopped to ask if you were alright.” 

“And then insulted my car.” 

“Whatever, dude. Just, be careful sitting here. Nightlife, you know.” 

“Right.” 

“Anyway, I really am sorry about your shitty car.” 

“Thanks, man.” 

“Sure. I uh, gotta get back to my friends now.” 

“Cool.” 

So the guy leaves, and Richie watches him join a group of kids waiting a bit away, dressed like they are going out, so they must be, and then he picks himself up, knees cracking, and puts his groceries in the backseat and plops himself back into his shitty, freshly dented car. He turns on the engine, backs up and into the street, and realizes half a block down that he forgot to ask his name. 

–

He sleeps in a motel for a week, interviews for a job at a pizza place down the street and is hired on the spot because they’re desperate or because he is, either one. He responds to a pinned flier for a roommate in a shitty apartment living with two other anonymous dudes and lives there for a year. He gets lucky one day, meets the cousin of a coworker at some work hang who hosts an internet radio show, works his charm, twists a curl, and snags a job fetching coffee. He works there another year. 

He makes enough money to afford to get the dent in his bumper fixed, digs through his car for the registration papers and finds them in the glove compartment with some other junk, old cds, fast food napkins, an empty packet of ketchup, a plastic fork, an old journal, shoving it all back into place and popping it closed again. The woman at the desk has bright red hair, curly, and as he fills out the paperwork he can’t stop sneaking glances at her. 

“Uh, what month is it?” He asks her when he gets to the date beside his signature. 

“February.” 

Richie writes it down, but he could have sworn it was January. 

  
  


**MARCH 1997**

On his 21st birthday his roommates take him out to a bar and he drinks himself sloppy, trips on the way to the bathroom to break the seal, hand to the wall for balance. His shoulder smacks painfully into someone going the opposite direction. The guy steadies him when he nearly eats shit, and he mumbles something akin to an apology, looks up into bambi eyes, furrowed brows, pink lips. 

_Found you,_ he thinks. And then the thought vanishes, and he is left achingly empty, and confused. 

“Uh.” 

The guy, equally flabbergasted, or maybe just also really drunk, studies him closely. His lips purse, head tilting comically in scrutiny, and where his hand still rests on Richie’s shoulder he burns. Richie blinks, resists the absurd urge to wrap his arms around this stranger in an embrace. Because he is drunk. 

“Have we met?” The guy says at length, and leans closer towards him. 

“Sweetheart, I think I would’ve remembered.” 

“Don’t call me that.” 

“What should I call you then?” 

“Eddie.” 

“I’m Richie.” 

“Richie, your left eye squints smaller than your right.” He presses the thumb of his other hand to his cheekbone. Richie wraps his fingers around his wrist. 

“More when I smile,” he says, and Eddie hums like he knows this already. “You noticed.” 

“You’re easy to look at.” 

Unthinkingly, Richie says, “I really want to kiss you.” 

Eddie mulls that over, peeks his tongue out, and then smiles. “Okay, but not here.” 

And then Eddie leads him out of the bar, and Richie feels a bit guilty for leaving his roommates but they’d been chatting with some girls for an hour anyway. They walk to the closest beach, a block or two from the bar, abandoned this late in the night, and sit on the swing set in the sand and he twists the chain on Eddie’s swing and lets go and Eddie laughs as he twists, legs pulled out by the force of it, and when he stands he stumbles, dizzy, and Richie touches his arm to steady him. 

He means to let go—they are both only that after-drunk tipsy now and too nervous in energy for this sort of charged touch—but Eddie leans forward, and barefoot in the sand the height difference is even greater so he has to lean up, hands on Richie’s arms for leverage, fingers clenched in the fabric, and because Richie doesn’t see it coming fast enough the kiss is lop-sided, half chin half mouth, and then he pulls away, watching Richie carefully. 

Richie, catching up now, cups his jaw with one hand and pulls him forward by the small of his back with the other. And when he kisses him again Eddie is smiling into it, and his breath shakes when he pulls back just barely to angle himself better, and Richie runs his tongue against the seam of his lips, pushing gently before Eddie opens his mouth for him, and Eddie makes a sound that goes straight to Richie’s gut when their tongues meet. 

Afterwards, sand in their hair and elsewhere, too, they walk into the ocean, and Richie is lifted weightless by the waves, his toes edging the sand, rising from the surface, before settling again. The sun begins to set, and sopping wet and kiss-bitten, Richie walks Eddie home. 

  
  


**JANUARY 1999**

He walks up to his car while a parking enforcer is ticketing him, attempts to sweet talk him into not giving him a ticket, fails so epically that Eddie is half trying not to laugh, half trying not to strangle him in his seat. 

He is given a ticket. He hands Eddie it to Eddie and asks him to stick it in the glove compartment, with the rest of them, and Eddie pops it open, squawks, and then tries to organize all of its contents in ill-advised helpfulness. 

“God, you’ve got so much junk in here.” 

“Hey,” Richie starts. 

“It’s gross, Rich. What even is this, your diary?” He holds up an old notebook and something in Richie’s gut churns and he feels abruptly like he might puke out the window. He snatches the thing from Eddie, without warning, ignores his noise of protest to flip through it. But the words blur, unintelligible. 

“Think I need a better prescription.” 

“What?” 

“Everything just got kind of blurry.” 

“Hey,” Eddie says, concerned now because Richie sounds awful, he can hear it himself, voice stricken and miserable. “Is your head hurting again?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Okay, I’ll drive, alright? C’mon, Rich.” He takes his hand where it presses painfully to his head. “You can nap when we get home and I’ll drive you to see someone tomorrow, alright?” 

“Okay,” Richie says, accepts a quick kiss on the cheek and then switches spots with him. The notebook he places on the floor by his feet. He watches Eddie on the way home, driving more carefully than he ever cares to because of _Richie,_ and his profile, long lashes, jaw working, eyes narrowing when some dipshit driver does something stupid but holding himself back from yelling profanities out the window. His headache ebs, and he falls asleep, in long traffic, even before they get home. 

–

He sells his car for a better one, cries a little as he is packing up the junk into a box. He turns 24, upgrades from glorified coffee runner to radio show host, eventually moves out to a one bedroom apartment of his own, with clean walls, his old raggedy sofa, a few plants he managed to keep alive, one affectionately named Eddie and the other Reginald. 

Eddie helps him with his boxes, and Richie is sort of astonished at how much he seems to have accumulated in the past few years. Eddie stays over afterwards, and Richie makes him dinner. They make out for a couple hours on the mattress in his room. Eddie kisses him hard on the mouth, softer on his stomach and then lower, and Richie returns the favor, working him slow and leaving marks low enough his fancy business shirts will cover them. They fall asleep sweaty on top of the sheets. 

Eddie helps him make the bed frame. Richie cooks him more dinner. He settles, almost too easily, into a routine. He buys tupperware, an old reclining chair from the thriftstore, a mint plant he puts by the sink. He keeps change in a jar by the front door for the laundromat, sits on the bench people-watching while his clothes finish, and sometimes Eddie joins him if he isn’t working obsessively on his graduate thesis and they will make up stories about the people they see. 

He shows Eddie some of his material one afternoon when they both have the day off but choose to spend it inside, and Eddie reads it over, lounged on the sofa with his legs tucked underneath him. He huffs out a laugh, flips the page, and Richie hovers anxiously over his shoulder and is shood away like an irritating fly a couple times before he can’t bother to control himself any longer. 

“What do you think of my stage name?” 

Eddie flips back to the first page and peers at the heading. “Trashmouth Tozier?” 

“Yeah.” 

“It’s uh—did you plagiarize that?” 

“What? Of course not.” 

“Hu. It just sounded familiar.” 

Three weeks later they are drinking enough to be tipsy but not sloppy, celebrating Richie’s first open mic at the comedy club, which was sort of terrible but they don’t care, pink-cheeked and fumbling for buttons and collapsing onto the bed, reaching to pull together again. Richie makes his legs shake, can feel it where his hands grip his thigh to keep them spread, and when he is back at eye level and Eddie has his legs wrapped around his lower back he can feel it still.

The way Eddie looks at him in the morning makes Richie warm all the way down to his toes, all curled up like a cat, hooded eyes, smiling like he doesn’t know he is, lazy watching Richie move around the room until he finally makes his way back to him, collapsing onto him so they both huff out a breath. 

Richie likes to be held, to be kissed, but what’s more he likes that Eddie wants to kiss him back, likes making him happy more than he likes being happy himself. And maybe, a little bit, that felt dangerous, catastrophic, but he didn’t care. They fall asleep for a few more hours. 

When he wakes up he calls his mother for the first time in weeks, dialing a new number since they moved away, once he hasn’t memorized yet so has to dig up in some old papers. She picks up quickly, like she had been expecting it, and he feels a pang of familiar guilt at having gone so long without talking to her. 

“Hey, ma.” 

_“Hi, sweetie!”_

“How are you?” 

Eddie arrives, hair ruffled from sleep, shoves his face into the back of his neck and his hands up underneath his shirt so it rides up to his chest. He groans, sleepy, just as Richie’s mom is starting to tell him about what’s been going on in her life, which first and foremost has something to do with growing cucumbers. 

_“Is someone there with you?”_ She interrupts herself. 

“Uh,” Richie starts. He hasn’t told her, but he has a feeling she might know, maybe or probably, and doesn’t know how to feel about that. “My friend is staying over.” 

_“Well, tell your friend hello from me._

“She says hello,” Richie says to Eddie, who gives a cute little wave to the phone like she might be able to see it. 

_“What’s his name?”_

“Eddie.” 

_“Eddie,”_ she sounds carefully. _“Have you told me about him before?”_

“I don’t think so, why?” 

_“No reason,”_ she says, and suddenly Richie’s head begins to hurt. 

  
  


**MAY 2002**

Eddie graduates with his master’s and gets a job working in finance management for a personal driving service. He sort of hates it, says he would rather own the business himself because of all the stupid decisions they make, that he didn’t fork over his next ten years of salary for a master’s degree just for this, and he comes over after work with his tie loose, ruffled feathers, pouty and heated before Richie cools him down, with dinner and a movie, or his hands, his mouth, his words, irritated as Eddie pretends to be by them, but which soothe him. 

He buys his own washing machine and hangs his clothes to dry on the patio, folds his laundry more often that he doesn’t, and sometimes he finds something of Eddie’s and won’t tell him but sticks it instead in the drawer he keeps an extra set of clothes and toiletries in, which should really be upgraded to something bigger soon. He has a spare key made, gives it to Eddie one evening while they are walking the beach, and when they get home Eddie uses it to open the door and kisses him hard against the wall when it closes behind them. 

When Richie asks about his mother, and why he takes so many painkillers some days, Eddie only blows him off. And when Eddie asks about his tendency to drink too much when he’s stressed out, and tells him his self deprecating jokes aren’t actually funny, Richie ignores him. They don’t talk about those things beyond that, because when they do it usually turns into a fight. Which the both of them equally hate. 

His next door neighbor must know, because Eddie stays over more often that he doesn’t. And sometimes Richie feels like puking when he thinks about that, how she could ruin them if she wanted, but she smiles at him when they leave home at the same time, and once baked him cookies after he mentioned they smelled good to her in the hall, and he looks after her cat when she visits her daughter in Oregon. So he tries not to dwell on it, and when he runs into her on the stairs, tells her his friend liked the cookies, and she calls Eddie his _nice friend with the big eyes, no?_ and gestures something bursting with her hands to indicate that, he laughs and nods and tells her _yep, that’s the one._

He makes room for Eddie in the closet, and they don’t really talk about what they are doing, long term. But he starts to split the grocery bill when they go shopping together, too, and he has a favorite side of the bed to sleep on. Richie starts to feel, oddly, and probably foolishly, like they are safe, that this is good, that they can last. 

–

Eddie comes home pink in the cheekbones from stress, tilting his head up for a consoling kiss, and saying nothing before heading to the shower. 

Richie sits on the bed waiting for him while he edits a terrible draft, when Eddie calls for him from the bathroom. He opens the door, unlocked, and his glasses fog from the steam. Eddie showers with his water too hot. 

“Can you grab me a new bottle of shampoo?” 

“Mine okay?” 

“Yeah.” 

He shuts the door, and goes to scramble through the top drawer in his bedroom, shoots his hand up in triumph when he finds an old motel brand bottle of shampoo, and knocks over the stack of boxes he has yet to unpack beside it _(seriously, Richie, it’s been months),_ spilling its contents all over the floor. He tiptoes over it all back to Eddie, tosses him the bottle across the bathroom, and laughs when Eddie yelps in surprise before shutting the door again. 

He then starts to shove everything back in the box, instead of maybe unpacking it like he should. It’s mostly junk, an old water bottle, some novel about corn children, whatever that means, random receipts from years ago and a worn out journal. Strewn beside it—an old faded polaroid, which Richie picks up carefully. 

It’s a close shot of Eddie, hair cut short but messier than he likes to keep it now, eyes just as big but even bigger on his cute, kid face. He’s blocking the camera with his arm, which is in some kind of cast, and he has that fake pouting actually trying not to laugh expression, so familiar to Richie it was uncanny to see on this younger version of him. 

Richie finishes putting everything back, places the polaroid on the bedside table, and takes four painkillers for his head, that has started to hurt. He lays down, closing his eyes. 

Eddie joins him not long after, crawling over him on the bed instead of just getting in on his side. He’s wearing Richie’s sweats, rolled up at the hems, and a tee shirt, with a gaping fish on it and labeled ‘fish your bass off,’ that once belonged to Richie but doesn’t anymore. He presses his face into Richie’s ribcage, tickling. Richie plucks the polaroid from beside him. 

“Hey, Eds,” Richie says, waving the picture around like it might still need developing. “Is this you?” 

Eddie shifts to sit up against the headboard, and takes the polaroid from Richie. “Where’d you get this?” 

“I think you might’ve left it at my last place. It was mixed up in my boxes.” 

“Hu, I don’t recognize it.” 

“You broke your arm?” 

“Summer of ‘89, yeah. I can’t remember how it happened, actually.” 

“Weird thing to forget.” 

Eddie shrugs. “Maybe,” he says, and leans over Richie to place the photograph back. Then he presses himself against Richie, and kisses him, and because he is all wound up, Richie presses his fingers to his back and kneads out all his knots, flips him over onto his stomach and settles on top of him and grazes his teeth on his shoulder until Eddie’s hips lift from the bed, pressing up into him, and he makes a little noise into the pillow. 

“Feel better?” Richie says afterwards, warm in the face and happy. His head, which had stopped hurting briefly, begins to ache dully again. But Eddie kisses him on the eyelids, and runs his hands through his hair, watching it fall back against his forehead like the most mesmerizing thing he’s ever seen. 

“Much,” Eddie says, with a sleepy smile. “Thank you.” 

  
  


**AUGUST 2003**

Eddie is trying to make him dinner but it burns, and the smell is awful but Richie doesn’t care. He doesn’t have an appetite anyway, feels instead like he might choke on his anger, betrayed, and selfish, and mean. He wants to spit in his mouth, wants him to swallow it, wants him to take it back. 

“I’m not mad you got the job, Eddie. I’m _mad_ that you didn’t even tell me you applied. New York? Are you fucking serious, you would hate it there!” 

“I fucking _lived_ there, Richie. What the hell do you even know?” 

“I know that you lied to me.” 

“What was I supposed to do, hu? My mom is on her fucking death bed, and I hate the people I work with and I hate my job and I hate it _here.”_

“You hate your mom, too.” 

“How do you even know—not the fucking point, Richie. I have a responsibility to take care of her. Look it up, maybe.” 

“Fuck you.” 

“Fuck you.” 

“What is your problem?” 

“My problem! My problem is that my mom is dying, and I hate what I do, and I’m miserable.” 

“I make you miserable?” 

“That’s not—Richie, you know that’s not what I mean. You’re the only good thing about my life. But, honestly, what the hell are we doing? Do you know, because I don’t, and it’s been six years of pretending we’re going to be fine, and lying to everyone’s faces, and I just… how long can we risk it?” 

“Risk what?” 

“You know what.” 

“Okay, so instead of, I don’t know, talking about this, you’re going to run away?”

“That’s not fair, Richie. I know you’re scared, too. You can’t even say it back.” 

“What?” Richie says, but realizes as soon as he says it. “That I love you, is that it? Because I do, I love you, Eddie.” 

“Not like this,” Eddie says, softly, and his voice cracks, and Richie reaches for him. 

“I love you,” he mumbles, against his lips, and again, into his collarbone. “I love you Ilove you Iloveyou.” 

_Finally,_ he thinks to himself, and aches, and hopes it might be enough, even though he knows it won’t be. 

–

Richie drives him to the airport, and they promise to call, which they do, once or twice, before they don’t. 

  
  


**2006**

Richie starts doing more standup, gets a couple laughs and then a couple more. He drinks himself to sleep, and his legs ache from sitting around so long, and he stops shaving. He is approached after a show, sat at the bar with beer he hates the taste of, and is handed a business card. He calls the number a week later. 

His bed feels too big and his apartment too empty, so he moves to another one with the money he starts to make, but he doesn’t know how to take apart the bed frame or who the hell helped him with it the first time, so he pays some guy to do it for him, because he has the money to be completely useless now. And he buys a new bed frame for his new place and gives away most of his other shit, too. 

He headlines, and six months after that his manager flies him out to New York for the start of his first tour. 

He feels sticky in the bar that night, one of the shitty ones where no one will recognize him, smell of airport stuck to his clothes, and he drinks too much. He should be happy, he knows, making people laugh, but his chest feels as empty as his jokes, and instead he is miserable. 

The place is loud, and he doesn’t speak to anyone, drinks beer he doesn’t like, actually prefers the sweeter drinks but he’s got an image he can’t ruin, not when people are just beginning to pay him mind. Someone sits down on the stool beside him, orders a cider and sips at it with two hands around the consendated glass. Richie chances a peek at his profile, and then, when he can’t look away, says aloud, “you okay?” 

The man turns to look at him. He has nice eyes, pretty, absurdly big and difficult to look away from. At the back of his head, Richie feels a slight tugging, the creeping sensation of being watched, and rubs at it with his hand, making his hair stick up. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Sure.” 

_“Sure?”_ The man repeats, and the tone of his voice is mean, but with a hint of something akin to interest. Richie feels heat at his cheekbones, and pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose too aggressively, so it hurts and his eyes water slightly. 

“You just—I dunno, man. You don’t _look_ fine.” 

It’s the bags underneath his eyes, how he is hunching over. His mouth twitches like he is trying not to bite back too hard. He takes a sip of his drink, careful, his eyes deliberate and watching Richie. 

“What’s got you down?” Richie plows on. “Job? Wife?” 

The man, for some reason Richie does not know, finally indulges him. “Both, maybe.” 

And then he glances up and down Richie entirely, and he squints his too huge eyes almost like he is remembering something, and presses two fingers to his right temple like it hurts there. And because in that moment Richie experiences the most reeling deja vu of his life, almost stumbling backwards in his seat, instead of saying something comforting, he says, “sucks to suck.” 

The man’s hand drops from his forehead, and he scowls, thin lips a purse before he swipes over them with his tongue. Richie catches the gesture like he was waiting for it, licks his own lips, too. 

“Asshole,” he says, and Richie smiles. 

“I’ve been told.” 

The man, and Richie thinks maybe he should ask his name but is oddly afraid to hear the answer, laughs, and where his hand now rests on the bar counter his thumb twists the gold band on his ring finger. 

“Have we met?” He says at length. 

“Funny,” Richie says. “I was going to ask you the same thing.” 

“Yeah,” the man says, and holds out his hand. “Eddie.” 

“Richie,” he says, stomach twisting when Eddie runs his thumb over his knuckle before he releases his grip. “Wife, hu?” 

Eddie sighs. 

–

He keeps a bar napkin on his bedside table, and for a few days after he gets back to LA he types the number into his phone, but never actually calls because it’s too early anyway. _I’m no homewrecker,_ he joked, but his voice was rough and trembling as he said it, when Eddie placed his palm hot on the inside of his thigh. _So call me in a couple months, and you won’t have to be._

He means to, but his housekeeper comes over two weeks later, and cleans his room and throws away the junk he keeps by the side of his bed, the empty beer bottles, old receipts he pulls out of his jean pockets before he strips to sleep, stuff he really shouldn’t leave out to let her clean up but was too terrible of a person to remember to do himself. 

And she throws the napkin out, and Richie has a weird, convoluted conversation with her about it, in which he can’t remember why he is upset, but wants to know if she took out the trash and if he can go through it, and she promises not to touch his bedside again, sort of teary-eyed when she says it, and he feels so terrible he pays her for the next two months of housekeeping, asks her not to come, and feels terrible for that, too, for his gross manhandling of the situation. 

He records his second special, feels increasingly like a liar and an asshole, scrolls through twitter, nodding at the hate, because it is not unfounded. He _was_ a hack, and his jokes _were_ terrible, and it didn’t even matter that he didn’t write them, and he didn’t deserve the money, or fame, or anything good, really. 

He drinks, pukes in the mornings and when he is nervous, when he is sad, before a show and after. So mostly he pukes all the time. And they dress him up, for interviews and autographs, in suits tailored especially for him, because he is too tall for something straight off the racks, and also because if you googled his net worth, it was now in the millions. 

  
  


**SUMMER 2016**

The evening of a show, Richie hangs nervously around backstage, twiddling his thumbs, takes a shot of gin—it never stops burning his throat on the way down—and runs into some kid with headphones on in the hallway on his way to the bathroom, almost smashing his teeth onto the kid’s forehead, something dropping with a thunk to the floor, before Richie steadies him with two hands to his shoulders. 

“Sorry, Rich,” the kid says. Richie recognizes him. He was on the lighting team, and asked for an autograph once. He can’t remember his name, and feels a little guilty for that. 

“No biggie, kid,” Richie says, and bends down to pick up whatever he dropped. It’s a book, absurdly thick, and heavy in hand. He hands it back over to the kid. 

“Thanks.” 

“What’s it about?” 

“Hu?” 

“The book. It’s gotta be good if you’re reading on the job,” Richie says, and then mentally smacks himself upside the head for sounding like an asshole. “Uh, which is totally fine, by the way. Lots of downtime with shows like this, which you, um, know already” 

“Um,” the kid says, and he is pink in the face. “It’s a horror, about this clown that kills kids.” 

“Dark,” Richie says with a whistle. “Any good?” 

“So far,” the kid says, and Richie thinks maybe his name is George. “I hear the ending sucks, though.” 

Later, while he sits once again in the backstage room, Richie stares at himself in the mirror. His lips are dry, split on the bottom, and his hair is curled at the temples with sweat, and his head aches so much he considers, hypothetically, decapitating himself for a bit of relief, and what tool would be best suited for that. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he slips it out. 

The caller ID is a number he doesn’t recognize, but beneath it, _Derry, Maine._

Outside the door, someone laughs. But the joke is not funny, and he is not funny, and this is very, very not funny. Despite this he feels a manic bubbling of laughter begin to grow in his throat, and his hands tremble as he swipes to answer, presses the phone to his ear. 

_“Richie.”_

For a long moment Richie says nothing, lips stitched shut, a puppet. He feels guilt, heavy and saturated, settle heavy in his gut. He might throw it up, and his eyes burn, and his hands tremble even more violently now, and his chest hurts, but amongst it all, the fear, and remembrance, the pain—his head no longer aches. 

“Mike,” he says, finally. “I’m so sorry.” 

_“For what, Richie?”_ Like he genuinely does not know. 

“For leaving you, for saying I would come back.” 

_“Oh,”_ Mike says. _“It’s okay, Rich.”_

“I promised you.” 

_“Okay. You still want to keep that promise?”_

“What?” 

_“It’s back.”_

“Shit,” Richie says. “Shit, yeah. Yeah, I’m coming, Mikey.” 

_“Good,”_ Mike says. _“And Richie?”_

“Yeah?” 

_“I uh, I gotta know… did you ever find him?”_

“I—” Richie starts, and for a ridiculous moment he has no idea what Mike is talking about, before the memories begin to flood into his head, an enormous, merciless wave of them, threatening to drown him but instead he is lifted, buoyed, and despite everything he smiles, and he closes his eyes. 

“Yeah,” Richie says softly, and on the other end Mike laughs like he’s been holding his breath. “Yeah, Mike, I found him.” 

**Author's Note:**

> <3 
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](https://petalloso.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/freidegg)
> 
> thank u for reading!


End file.
